


The Bite of a Blizzard

by Kisleth



Series: In Which Caves Set a Better Mood than a Five-Star Restaurant [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Pre-Slash, Survival
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-23
Updated: 2012-11-23
Packaged: 2017-11-19 08:39:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/571336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kisleth/pseuds/Kisleth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: Bruce and Clint seeking shelter somewhere together</p><p>Clint and Bruce, who always seem to rub each other the wrong way when alone, manage to fall through the snow into a cave after the quinjet crashes and the Avengers are separated. Now they have to work together to survive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Bite of a Blizzard

**Author's Note:**

> Clint is a vegetarian because of a bad op. He gets physically sick if he eats the muscle tissue of any mainland animal. Fish are fine.
> 
> Warnings: Clint kills a bear and skins it. Bruce eats it too. Not terribly graphic but just in case someone isn't into reading about that.

Of course it's a blizzard. It is just like that for them. Always. Something crazy just throws them together and they're stuck like that. It's enough to drive Clint mad sometimes. It's not that he hates the doctor, not really, but he can just be so critical of everything Clint does without meaning it. 

Sure, Banner had been on his own and running and hiding across the globe for most of his life. Clint had done almost the exact same thing but with one major difference: he was usually way north or way south. Banner had enjoyed the world around the equator, Clint had chipped his teeth from chattering in the arctic. Clearly, Clint would know what to do in this more than Bruce.

But no, Bruce has doctorates. An education. Clint has his bow. Seriously, fuck that guy. He might not have finished school, but he's good at math. He is fantastic with geometry and he's decent with physics. How else could he make any shot in any condition and always hit? The wonderful world of math, kiddies. No thanks to the brain over there.

So they argue until Clint tell him to fuck off and freeze while he does the smart thing. And that's when they fall through some opening and into a cave. Clint lands and gets gravel in his back, Bruce lands across him and knocks himself out on a rock. Conditions are looking up.

Until the bear. Clint feels bad about killing it, but he has no choice. He can barely see, and there's no telling if they could escape in time. His eyes hardly have a chance to adjust either. He trips over Bruce, kicking the unconscious man hard in the ribs with steel toed boots. The groan makes him feel a little bad. He focuses on the bear again and somehow manages to kill it with a dagger and limited damage to himself.

He'll have some bad ass scars on his scalp and probably play up the story because Bruce couldn't correct him on the details. He uses the snow that fell in with them to wash the blood and slow it from coming out both their heads. He drags Bruce into the bear's nest to keep him warm and goes to pick through their emergency supply bags that they managed to find in the wreckage of the quinjet they'd been in with other SHIELD personnel. He wonders briefly if the others will ever find them. Not in this mess at least.

He finds a flashlight and uses it to navigate the cave. There are leaves and brush that have blown inside, as well as a few small threes by the entrance. It's all shielded from the direction of the wind and snow so Clint takes the risks and uses the saw-like edge of his knife to cut down branches and saplings as fast as he can. He digs around the shallower drifts of snow for dead wood and leaves too.

He piles it high just in the doorway, it's better to use his daylight hours to gather what he can and spend the worst of the storm moving it all deep inside. And sometime tonight he'll have to start cooking up the pieces of bear. Who knows how long until they have food again?

The thought of eating meat makes his stomach churn and the phantom injuries over his ribs ache but it was that or starve. He'd rather not starve. He'll overcome the psychological damage as best as he can until he finds something he can eat.

When there's enough wood he begins to drag enough back to start up a fire. He checks on Bruce and wraps more snow into a ruined shirt as an ice pack for his head. His own scap is aching, but the bleeding stopped and he doesn't want to risk it getting moist and bleeding again. He'll deal with swelling over blood loss any day.

Checking through the emergency pack he finds a small pot, perfect for purifying water to drink. For now he's just trying to melt it so he can wash some of the blood away from the bear's fur. He makes a torch from the rest of the ruined shit and a stick to give himself extra light as he skins the bear. It'll make a good blanket. He removes the skin from the meat on one side and scrapes the fat away.

He keeps the greasy globs in case of needing a base for ointment or chapped skin on a piece of oiled cloth he found in the bag. He's glad Natasha had packed the ones they found. She knew what they would need.

He hears a groan from the corner as he puts more hunks of meat onto yet another spit. Not all of them are over the fire, but he doesn't want it to get contaminated on the floor either. His hands are a bit slick from the fat, and aching from being clenched tight from trying not to vomit at the smell of cooking flesh. "Hey, Sleepin' Beauty," he snarks, not looking away from what he's doing. Almost all the entrails were tossed out. He's certainly  _not_  eating those.

Clint washes his hands in the snow, sighing in relief, before bringing more snow to put against Bruce's head. The doctor grudgingly lets him do it. "Think ya can keep an eye on the food while I try to speed-tan that hide?" The skin should be soaked for three days in water among other treatments, but it's getting cold soon. He uses a mixture of water and hand sanitizer on it after scraping off all the fat and everything else that needs to be removed. He vigorously washes it and then props it up near the fire and repeats. It's just big enough to cover him and Banner if they cuddle close. It's not something he's looking forward to, but it's better than freezing.

He's not going to get it tanned, but at least it's not going to smell like rotting meat. Once he's waiting for round four of water cleaning the skin, he drags himself back to the mouth of the cave. It's almost completely covered in snow and he has to dig out about half the wood. He keeps making trips back and forth, stacking it against the wall in small groups with enough space between them so the damp stuff can dry out.

Clint taps Bruce's shoulder as he passes, "Tag team napping." He mutters as he grabs the skin and crawls into the bear's nest to sleep off his aching everything.

Something tugs at his scalp and he wakes with a jerk. A large, firm hand presses him down. It only makes him fight harder. "Dammit, Barton, stop moving." Clint freezes. Banner. "I found a topical numbing agent, I'm stitching up these lesions you failed to mention earlier." Clint closes his eyes again and lets Bruce work. Hopefully there won't be any infections to accompany the three gouges on his scalp.

When he wakes again, Bruce seems to want to feed him. The smell of cooked flesh makes him gag and he throws himself away from the meat and goes deeper into the cave to vomit what little is in his stomach. When he comes back, Bruce has found little bags of dried soup ingredients and boils water to make him soup. The doctor doesn't touch any of it, it's all for Clint.

He also, mercifully, doesn't ask why Clint puked. Clint doesn't offer the information either. After they've eaten there's nothing else to do but sleep. It's tense for a while but soon they have cuddled close under the bear skin to share their body heat as the fire dies out.

"You were right." Bruce says softly from where he's spooned around Clint. His other side is too badly bruised to lay on his other side and he refused to move. Bruce had no choice but to face him awkwardly or spoon him. 

 _Of course I was_ , "I know," Clint mutters. He's trying not to be smug about it. It Tony were here, he probably would have pinched him. Tony is weird like that.

"Ass." Banner replies with little heat.

"I know that too." He'd been tempted to go more along the lines of "I know my ass is fantastic, yadda yadda yadda" but the close confines they were in made him refrain. "Get some sleep, Doc. The GPS tracker has been going for the last five or so hours. The team'll find us."

That next morning, while huddled around a growing fire... Clint was right again.


End file.
